1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an operating program writing system which writes an operating program of a system comprised of a combination of a peripheral and a robot.
2. Description of the Related Art
An industrial robot which is provided with a hand which clamps a workpiece often processes the workpiece in coordination with a machine tool or other peripheral. Further, a controller controls the system comprised of the robot and peripheral in accordance with a predetermined operating program. When the peripheral and workpiece etc. are changed, that operating program has to be suitably changed.
In Japanese Patent No. 3905075, arguments which correspond to teaching positions of an operating program are defined and position information is input to the arguments in accordance with the work content. Further, in Japanese Patent No. 5058063, the operating program is divided into a plurality of blocks corresponding to work units and the blocks are suitably combined. Furthermore, Japanese Patent Publication No. 8-249026A proposes a programming method which uses icons to assemble a work sequence on the screen of a computer. In this way, in the prior art, a new operating program has been edited in accordance with the work content.
However, in the prior art, even when completing a new operating program, it was necessary to actually run the operating program to judge the validity of the operating program. In other words, in the prior art, until actually running the operating program, its validity could not be judged. For this reason, when actually running the operating program, for example, sometimes the trouble of the workpiece which was held by the hand of the robot striking the peripheral etc. was found. Further, in such a case, it was necessary to again correct the operating program and again run the corrected operating program to confirm if there is trouble or not. Such work was complicated. Further, tremendous time was required.
Further, in the prior art, since the operating program was actually run to judge its validity, it was difficult to use a system which edits the operating program for maintaining the routine operation of the robot.
Furthermore, the work of dividing an existing operating program into a plurality of blocks in accordance with the work content required tremendous time. For this reason, it was difficult to introduce such a system for dividing an operating program into a plurality of blocks, into a robot where an existing operating program was being used.
The present invention was made in consideration of this situation and has as its object the provision of an operating program writing system which is able to simply judge the validity of a new operating system before it is completed.